Month: December 2007

She is a good little dog, even if lame. One of my co-workers *drives for the Amish in the area, and heard that one family was getting rid of a female Yorkshire terrier. It turns out that they bought her for breeding, and thought that her limp and strange gait would go away as she grew. When they took her to the vet for her checkup, he told them they should not breed this dog. So they decided to get rid of it. My co-worker asked them to give her 2 weeks to find a new home, rather than just “putting her down”.

I had recently done some research on dogs, to find out which ones were good for livestock protection. I found a nice long list, and noticed that most were large. At the very bottom there was the Yorkshire Terrier, and I thought it was funny to find it there. So when we found that a Yorkie needed a home, we were ready to say yes.

She is a pretty little dog, but seems to have spine or hip trouble and does not use her back right leg most of the time. She does not complain, does not seem to be in pain, and is still very active.

Even so, I think we have decided on a name… Kalooy (ka-loo-oy), which is Bisaya for pitiful (or too be pitied). We find that we spend a lot of time saying or thinking “poor thing”, so I think it will be quite appropriate.

*Sometime the Amish need to get somewhere that it is impractical to use a horse and buggy, so they pay neighbors to drive them, and generally pay them pretty well.

Last weekend we were the glad recipients of 14 inches of snow! Our neghbor stopped by to let us know that we were not snowed in, and that he would plow out our driveway. Very nice! He has an old ford tractor with 4 ft. tires and snow chains. While he was telling us that he would release us from our welcome snowy bondage, he also mentioned that one of the trees that they cut down in the hedgerow a few fields over had some bees and honey, and that we should go have a look. So the kids and I bundled up, grabbed a sled, and trudged over to see. We pulled some of the comb out, and there were a lot of dead bees, many smashed from the tree falling. Once we pulled out the easily accessible pieces, we could see live bees, and hear their hum ans they worked to keep the hive warm. Off we slogged, back to the house with our harvest of wild honeycomb.

There was quite a bit of it:

And it was just oozing honey:

I wrapped sections of the comb in a piece of old tee-shirt, and squeeeeeeezed…

It was a rather sticky and messy affair (I felt like Winnie the Pooh), and my fingers made regular trips to my mouth.

But it did indeed work, and in the end we had around 2 quarts of raw wild honey and lots of beeswax that was made about 500 feet from our house!

Later in the afternoon, after all the squeezing and cleanup, I took a jar over to the neighbors. After all, it was their tree, fields, and bees that made the sweet stuff.